


domesticity

by quadrille



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Background Relationships, Bedrooms, Domestic, Gen, Haven (Dragon Age), Platonic Relationships, Team as Family, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 15:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11672151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: Cassandra, Cullen, and Josephine shared a bedroom at Haven. Somehow, it worked.





	domesticity

**Author's Note:**

> A very quickly-written thing inspired by [this post](http://antivanruffles.tumblr.com/post/117320352442/okay-so-im-playing-dai-again-and-im-in-haven). Some light background Cullen/Female Mage Trevelyan.

They stand in the doorway, surveying the empty room. Stone walls, cold floors, scattered musty hay, some barrels of brined food that still need to be rolled out.

Leliana’s nose is already wrinkling in distaste.

“Are you sure you don’t want one of the beds, Leliana?” Josephine asks. She’s fretting, ever-conscientious and keeping an eye on others’ needs, but the spymaster shakes her head.

“I need open air,” Leliana says crisply, her melodic Orlesian accent turned harder with the years. “I need to be able to reach the ravens and vice versa. So — no, it is fine. Take it, Josie.”

Without waiting for the others to sort it out, Cullen’s already chosen the bed in the corner, dropping an armful of books onto the nearest table.

(What Leliana doesn’t explain is her fondness for tents, for camping, for roughing it outdoors. She never thought she’d grow that used to it — she used to be a bard of fine tastes, once — but it reminds her of her time with the Warden. And so she still likes a simple bedroll on packed earth, a campfire glowing just outside the mouth of the tent.)

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Cassandra announces. “I don’t expect us to have to put up with this arrangement for too long.”

  


* * *

  


Two months later, they’re still there.

Any spare sleeping space has been completely overhauled for their soldiers and mages, an ever-growing operation that keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day, as more bedraggled refugees and desperate fugitives arrive on their doorstep, frightened by the light in the sky — and so, with space at a premium, three of the most important people in the Inquisition keep sharing this one cramped little room.

They’ve settled into an amiable sort of equilibrium, with only the occasional half-hearted grumbling. Cassandra is a night owl, staying up late with a candle reading an over-large book (with a suspiciously lurid cover), occasionally cursing in Nevarran when she drops a glob of hot wax on her hand. Cullen is an early bird, up before dawn every single morning, trying to buckle on his armour discreetly before he slips out to run drills with his soldiers.

The three of them have learned to sidestep around each other, stay out of each others’ way, not mess with each others’ things.

  


* * *

  


Josephine props her lute against the wall and promptly forgets about it, buried as she is in piles and stacks of reports and letters and thinly-veiled manipulation and offers made and threats rendered.

Until Cullen shuffles in from the war room, nursing his own headache from the latest report of a squad lost. He looks frayed and thin, kneading his brow as if he can massage the pain away. He’s still a little dazed when he seems to notice the lute for the first time. “You do know how to play that, don’t you?”

“Look who’s getting an attitude,” Cassandra says, without looking up from her book.

But Josephine is already reaching for the instrument, glad of the chance to set her work aside. “Of course I do. Would you like a lullaby, Cullen?”

“Preposterous,” he says, seated on the edge of his bed, loosening the clasp on his fur cloak. But then there’s a beat. “Though, if you wouldn’t mind…”

Which is how they wind up spending that evening: setting their reports aside and just listening to the soft, sweet sound of Josephine singing, her fingers rippling across the strings. Cassandra’s bookmarked her page and straightened in her seat, paying attention as severely as if she’s examining swordplay technique.

Cullen falls asleep first, dozing off to the song. It’s his best sleep in weeks.

  


* * *

  


“You need to remember to eat.” Leliana emerges like a wraith — Josie didn’t even hear her approaching — and sets a bowl of still-warm stew on the war table in front of her. The ambassador realises it, then; she _hasn’t_ eaten today, not since some hard, stale bread at breakfast. (Such a far cry from the Antivan paella and pastries she grew up on. She’d always had a sweet tooth, and been spoiled at bakeries by Yves, being his eldest and favourite.)

She stares down into the bowl — it’s soldiers’ food, something more suited for Cullen and Cassandra — and sighs, but starts obediently shoveling spoonfuls into her mouth regardless. She looks up at her friend, where Leliana is brushing a layer of snow off her hood and shoulders, leaving it to melt on the flagstones. “Doesn’t it get cold out there in your tent? We’re on top of a _snowy mountaintop_. You must be freezing.”

Leliana shrugs. “Doesn’t it get stuffy and crowded in there?” A tip of her head towards the dormitory door.

Josie follows her gaze, and considers. She thought there’d be more to complain about, having to share her most intimate space with a tight-laced workaholic of a man, and a stern, scarred Seeker.

But it’s home.

  


* * *

  


“How is our little herald doing?” the ambassador asks one day, narrowly stopping herself from chewing on the nib of her quill.

“Admittedly, we _had_ hoped for Hawke,” Cassandra says. “The man is larger-than-life and certainly bombastic enough, if Tethras’ tales are to be believed.” Implication being: they might not be. “I wasn’t fond of her at first, and Trevelyan certainly isn’t who I would have taken, given free choice… but I think she’s working out well.”

“I believe in her,” Leliana says simply.

The room is small, warm, and cozy, practically shutting out the rest of the world. The advisors can bare their thoughts here, pick each others’ minds, plan for the future… and, sometimes, simply talk.

  


* * *

  


A band of apostates has offered their help to the Inquisition, and when Josephine reports this with an air of triumph, she sees the exact same stricken look flicker across both Cullen and Cassandra’s faces. “You two are such a pair in your bigotry,” Josephine scoffs, which makes Cullen blush with self-consciousness. Cassandra simply huffs and ignores the comment.

From her spot leaning against the wall, Leliana smirks. “You should have met the witch of the wilds I travelled with. I wonder what you would have made of her.”

  


* * *

  


Cassandra is out voyaging with the Herald for weeks at a time, sometimes, which creates some space in the dormitory — and Josephine finds that she misses the third of their group, and that the room feels oddly too empty at night. There’s a late evening where she’s sitting at one of the desks, her oversized quill sweeping across parchment, hunched over the tabletop and shoulders tight as she scribbles.

The door knocks open and Cullen stumbles in, wobbly on his feet from exhaustion.

“Mmmmrf,” he mumbles and simply collapses into bed, not even bothering to kick off his boots, burying his face in the pillow.

“Cullen?” she asks, lightly.

No reaction.

“Cullen?”

Motionless as a rock.

Getting to her feet, Josephine tugs his blanket loose, tucks it in over his shoulders, and then on impulse, brushes a lock of blond hair out of his face.

She can understand why the Herald pays attention to him so.

  


* * *

  


Josephine and Leliana are sitting on the rooftop of one of the Haven cabins, splitting a bottle of Antivan red. The bitter taste of it reminds her of home, and staring out at this frozen wasteland, she feels her heart shudder in her chest.

Leliana is such a frightening, imposing figure to others, but Josie leans her head against her best friend’s shoulder with only a contented sigh. The bard’s hands are gentle, fingertips against the back of her neck, a comforting touch.

“I’m so tired. It never ends.”

“I know, Josie. But it will. I have to believe that. And all on the strength of…”

Her voice peters off. Below them, they can see the Herald and Cullen standing in the doorway of the Chantry, discussing something or other. The mage’s hands move in flurries, gesticulating emphatically to underscore her point. They can see her passion for their cause writ in every movement.

And it’s only because they know Cullen so well that they note the way he’s carrying himself. It might look like the man’s usual stiff-jawed posture… but he’s focusing a bit too hard on keeping his arms crossed, his body leaning away from the herald, lest he betray his interest.

It makes Josephine smile, ever the romantic. “Do you think she’ll ever realise?”

“We all have other things on our minds, I think.”

“Oh, lighten up!” She shifts to deliver a playful punch to the bard’s shoulder, and she’s rewarded by seeing Leliana’s normally-dour face break into a real smile, a stifled laugh. More like she was in the old days. The young friend she remembers.

Neither of them mention the thought circling both their minds: _But Trevelyan is a mage._

  


* * *

  


All of them are, to some degree, surprised to realise exactly how upsetting it is when Haven is destroyed.

Cassandra’s boot nudges some of the rubble of the ruined Chantry. They can’t even see the outline of where their room used to be.

“I told us not to get too comfortable,” she says. She tries to make it sound sardonic, but it comes out wistful.

“Think on the bright side: we’ll have room for our own private quarters at Skyhold.” Cullen’s jolliness rings false, too. But then, tired of the moping, Josephine grabs both their elbows and links her arm in theirs. Leliana lingers behind them, the ever-present shadow.

“What happened is dreadful, but the Inquisition persists, and we’ll have a new home. That one will be good too. And at least all of us are still here and alive and well, yes?”

Looking around, the advisors all meet each others’ eyes, and slowly nod. Cassandra kicks one of the rocks in a fit of pique, and Josephine steers her away. Cullen’s cloak is warm against her arm.

Together, they walk back down the mountain.


End file.
